I can’t recall the precise moment I turned into my mother, whom I only heard swear once in her life. Even then, she uttered only a mild condemnation that implied no blasphemy, but it still surprises me that it came from someone who thought Rhett Butler’s use of the same word in the final scene of “Gone With the Wind” was edgy. My father, on the other hand, swore profusely. Neither randy nor vulgar, he used swear words inventively, stringing them together in odd sequences and punctuating them with wildly flailing arms. His spiels were part eloquent poetry and part comedic miming, and to be perfectly honest, I was in awe of his “gift.” So it surprised me when I heard my dear dead mother’s words tumble from my mouth the other day in the form of a question to a convenience store clerk: “What did you just say?”

She had dropped the bomb – you know the one – to describe the malfunctioning computer as casually as one might a more descriptive adjective, like “temperamental.” Calmly and unabashedly, she repeated that statement, without editing herself. “This (expletive) screen won’t clear.”

In her defense, she was probably having a rotten day. The fuel pumps were rejecting debit and credit cards all day, putting her face-to-face with cranky customers who normally pay at the pump – indeed, customers who feel they have actual control of their lives only during those few minutes they fuel their vehicles in peace and solitude. Some probably leapt on the obvious, that the point of pay-at-the-pump service is convenience, and it’s not convenient if they have to go inside the store and ask the clerk to pre-approve their purchases. Some may have even acted as if the malfunction was her fault.

I wasn’t shocked in the sense that I thought the clerk’s use of the epithet implied some moral failing on her part, just that the shock value of the word seems to have dissipated. Even my father wouldn’t have uttered it, not even if his prized Angus cattle had stampeded through the garden and yard to build up the momentum needed to assist them in jumping over the moon.

Linguistically, it is an interesting and utilitarian word that can be used as nearly every part of speech. And there are signs that it’s no longer taboo. Even the uptight Federal Communications Commission ruled that Bono did not violate indecency statutes when he used the word in its adjectival form during the 2003 Golden Globe Awards telecast. So, as long as it’s not used as a verb or a metaphorical sense, it’s OK to utter the word on television, despite what comedian George Carlin said back in the day.

Still, common as the word is in everyday vernacular, the convenience store clerk’s use of it made for an interesting customer-service moment that probably earned her more frowns than thumbs in the air. In his CareerJournal.com column in The Wall Street Journal Online, Jared Sandberg noted last week that “profanity is a barometer of corporate culture because cussing up a blue streak may be taboo to some companies and expected in others.

“It’s used as everything from a social bonding tool to a badge of status, from a weapon to a substitute for it,” Sandberg continued. “Not least, it’s a stress reliever when the paper tray doesn’t know it’s already full, a voicemail system doesn’t recognize a password, or when an automated restroom faucet splashes your pants, suggesting incontinence that is good for no one’s career.”   Or when the fuel pumps spit out transaction cards.